80 young dancers aged 5 to 16 years old strut their stuff during the Dynamic Dance Workshop Co. summer dance camp last week at École secondaire publique Odyssée.
80 young dancers aged 5 to 16 years old strut their stuff during the Dynamic Dance Workshop Co. summer dance camp last week at École secondaire publique Odyssée.Not everyone has the opportunity to take a passion and turn it into a thriving business but that is just what two young accomplished dancers Justin De Bernardi and Kloé Schultz have done.
The two university students own and operate Dynamic Dance Workshop Co., which is presently in its 4th year of operation, and has grown to be a successful summer dance program. De Bernardi, who is studying dance at university while his partner Schultz (competed on So You Think You Can Dance Canada) is on a dance team at school while perusing a degree in health sciences, run the camps in North Bay, Sturgeon Falls, Parry Sound and New Liskard. This year they have over 300 participants taking part this year.
“We started off just (saying) hey let’s start a dance camp because this is our passion,” explains Schultz.
“And it just kept growing it sort of has become our summer job … it’s a pastime and it just grew into a summer job, so it is awesome, it’s great, it is the thing we love doing and we spend time with kids … it is more than we could ask for.”
De Bernardi, who has been dancing since the young age of five, says dance is just something that he has always loved and wants to help just to be able to share what he can do with the younger kids. The team is also understands many families face hardships and cannot afford to put their kids in camps so they introduced scholarships for a number of the spots.
“It’s not everyone who gets an opportunity to dance throughout the year,” he explains.
“There are different families who aren’t as fortunate and if they can just come to this program and have a Dynamic Dance Scholarship … it helps people come to dance camp.”
“That is what we want to see here different people dancing together.”
De Bernardi also contends that with an amazing number of boys registered the idea of dance is taking on a new concept.
“Dance has been growing in the public especially with ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and ‘So You Think You Can Dance Canada’ and we want to bring that to the community,” he says.
“That’s one of our goals is healthy lifestyles, we just want people to keep moving you know it is better to be dancing then to be doing nothing at home. They can just come out here and be doing something in the summer doing an activity instead of nothing and dance is such a great thing.”
Last week the team had 80 young dancers aged 5 to 16 years old registered for the camp at École secondaire publique Odyssée, which wrapped up with a well-received public performance.
“It’s intense, but it is really great though, we started off pretty small and every year progressively grew and this year is just one of our biggest groups,” Shultz tells BayToday.
“It’s awesome because we have so many volunteers so we get that one on one with all the kids with that big- of a number and it’s awesome … it’s a handful but we love it and we just love sharing our passion with all the kids.”
She says it is a mutual admiration camp as the
“Each and every one of them touches us on so many levels, they inspire us as well,” she says.
“We see so much talent to come from these kids who have never danced before. I mean we are a bit of an introductory camp as well, so seeing these kids come from nowhere with all this talent is amazing.”
“And just to see them progress and grow over these four days is amazing, so we love that, and the kids that are already dancers we see that change as well and we help them come out of their shell, so it’s a great program for kids.”
The team returns for to the Bay for a second week of dance camp from August 3rd until August 6th. Folks can register by going to the website dansedynamicdance.com or by calling 498-2834.
